But it makes a great difference HOW we sacrifice. Do we offer our words and our actions to God unwillingly, as only a duty, our hearts filled with bitterness and complaints? Or do we offer even our smallest words and deeds with great love?
How did Jesus sacrifice himself? Bradley Jersak tells us,
"The meaning Christ attributes to sacrifice is simply this: laying one's life down for someone else. (1 John 3: 16). Anyone who gives their life to rescue another - whether it's a fireman dying while pulling someone from a flaming building, a policeman who's fatally wounded while rescuing a hostage, or a martyr stoned to death while preaching the Good News - is 'paying the ultimate price.'...Here, sacrifice (laying down your life) is raw actuality, the events as they happened.
"Notice that this type of sacrifice has nothing to do with punishment, payment, retribution, or appeasement. In every case, a life is given for the sake of the other, not to satisfy someone's wrath or placate their anger, but as a life-giving, life-saving sacrifice.
"When God sent his Son to earth to restore the planet, the sacrifice - his life, his death - was the costly offering of self-giving love. But, unlike the fireman, policeman, or martyr, Jesus' sacrificial death allows him to rescue even the dead as well, because he brings them with him back from the grave." (from "A More Christlike God.")
Probably none of us - or very few of us - will make the ultimate sacrifice by giving our lives for someone. But we need to offer our small, daily sacrifices to God in the same spirit - the Holy Spirit - with which Jesus sacrificed his life and death for us. So we can ask ourselves: Do we say and do things to appease someone - or God? Do we offer God our words and deeds to pay him back, as if this were a transaction? As if God is keeping a ledger and we want our lives to be in the black rather than in the red? Are we afraid that, if we don't do what God asks of us, God will be angry with us?
Don't forget that Jesus did not live and die for us to appease an angry God. Jesus lived and died for us because God-in-Christ endured our sin, carried our sin, suffered our defiant, violent rejection, and, instead of paying us back with wrath, God forgave us freely with grace. "For love's sake, God opts for mercy and forgiveness on Good Friday. God chooses restoration over retribution. He does this for us; he does it for love." (Jersak)
We are not Jesus. But the Living Christ lives in us, moves in us, acts in us, if we freely allow ourselves to be his instruments. If we speak and act as Jesus did and does, freely, with merciful love - imagine what God can accomplish in us and with us! Who knows how a simple word or deed of ours affects someone else's life? For someone in poverty or depression, our words and deeds can literally save lives. Our forgiveness can literally bring someone back from the brink of a grave of self-hate or despair. Daily, if we quietly "lay down our lives" for others - our spouses, children, parents, friends, co-workers - our love for them is a life-saving, heart-changing remedy for them.
We must never forget what the sacrifice of Jesus accomplished and continues to accomplish:
"Amazingly, Jesus' forgiveness extends beyond the conspirators and agents of his crucifixion - beyond Pilate and Caiaphas and their cronies. He applies forgiveness to all humankind for all time. How? Why is this death, this blood, this forgiveness, universal? I suspect it is because the blood shed is the blood of God, who is himself universal, an eternal storehouse of mercy. This God who is universal love empties himself and pours eternal love into the cosmos though the wounds of that first century Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth."
What a deep Mystery this is! All of our sins are forgiven and wiped away by the intense love and mystery of God-in-Jesus. Don't we feel intense relief? Don't we want to now be more and more like Him in our ability to love? If we are so freely loved by God, doesn't God ask us to love others freely in His Name? When someone loves us so intensely, how can we refuse?
When we offer God our small simple sacrifice of our daily words and actions out of our free love, our merciful God doesn't expect Divine perfection of us. All God asks is that we attend to His school of love - the sacrifice of His Son's life and death for us - with a willing heart. If we open our hearts to Him, willing to love ever and ever more deeply and freely, we will become more of who we are - created in God's Image and Likeness - and truly we will set small, hidden fires ablaze in the hearts of those who are touched by our lives.